Developer Tom Hears from a Model Downtowner

Dear Tom Moyer,

Here’s my $1.2 million check in advance for a studio condo in your fabulous Moyer Tower. Since you plan only eighty-five condos in your new office tower, I want to get right in there on the top floor, so to speak. Floor thirty-something would be nice, way up at the top. And north light, please! I am a bit of an artist, you know (oils).

I just love it out there in the Northwest and spend several glorious weeks in Portland every summer and fall. New York gets so hot and humid, you know. I get the Oregonian and the Tribune here in New York, and I just marvel at what you movers and shakers of the PBA and PDC are doing midtown, to say nothing of the PPB. You’re going to make it so comfortable for people like me. You know, us in the Creative Class.

It is impressive, Tom, how you guys in PBA are unafraid to crunch some old tavern like that decadent Virginia Cafe or some aged apartment house — just like your PPB is unafraid to crunch some homeless rodent in the Pearl, right there in broad daylight, to send the right message. Yes, that’s how to get a well dressed city. Little Portland is getting totally awesome! Rudy, Michael, Donald: they would approve. (They may even be in envy, you know, Tom, because New York, no matter how hard it tries, can never be as white as Portland.)

Back here in the East, we consider you Oregonians a bit, well, provincial, and when you spout that “world class” stuff, we do get a titter. But, Tom, big Tom, you yourself are becoming the Donald Trump of Portland! That tall pink one up at Broadway, that splendid glassy, classy Fox Tower. Tom, it’s soooo huge. It dwarfs everything around it! And, coming in it’s shadow, I read, is your own Tom Moyer Park and Garage. And now you promise classy, glassy towers everywhere, and, when I go out, it will be like a mall, with restaurants with names that I know, and everywhere shops, shops, shops for me, me, me.